If you'd care to try inverting the pulse signal, it is done here.
May, or may not help but usually does make a difference.
Russ

my voltage from ports
port 2 ( 3.2)                                    10   (3.4)         when I hit the arrow key in opposite direction, only ports 3.5.7.10
3        (3,3)                                     11   (5)            went to 0 if that means anything.
4        (3.3)                                     12   (5)
5        (3.3)                                     13   (5)
6        (3,3)
7        (3.3)
8        (3.3)
9        (3.3)

Tried the inverting, want move at all.

x running by itself sounds and does good.
Y and A by itself sounds ok and runs ok but not as good as the X.
Will barely run together and sometimes Y and A will stop and X will run very slow.
all three motors are long 34 steppers.  Is the 3.3 volts from the computer port correct?

The docs for your drives specify a min. of 5v.
Russ

As Russ has mentioned, if your drivers require 5 Volt TTL signals and your Parallel Port is only outputting 3.3 Volt TTL then your CNC machine will never work correctly.

You could perhaps add a PCI Parallel Port card which outputs the required 5 Volt TTL – there is a guide here;  https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=34848.0

Or

AsCraig has suggested, buy and use a suitable motion controller.

(there are BoB's and converters that will transform a 3.3V TTL to 5V TTL but they are more of a patch than a solution).

Tweakie.

will buy ESS and will post when connected to tell how it works.
Thanks

has been awhile posting but got the ESS installed,  set motor tuning to x and y/a.  can hold down arrow keys for x and y and motors run ok but when running demo they are doing the same thing; dragging, growling stopping. Did not help by buying ESS. Changed computers, no change. It doesn't do it at any certain line in gcode. I am very new at this and i'm sure I have missed a setting. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi Ricky,

Could you perhaps connect a voltmeter to the output of your motor drivers power supply and monitor the voltage when the stalling / growling occurs - is there a voltage drop ?

Tweakie.

Hi,
I presume that you must be using a breakout board with the ESS? Is it the same breakout board that you used previously
when trying to get the parallel port to run?

The pulse streams to your motor drivers are generated within the FPGA of the ESS. I think you can rest assured that the
ESS is generating high quality pulse streams.

The problem therefore must be in those components that remain, namely the breakout board and the drivers. Do you have
or have access to an oscilloscope?

When you are running your machine you say it runs OK when jogging but fails with Gcode? Have you tried MDI instructions?

Craig